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Aide’s Fees Draw Critics and, Then, Defenders

WASHINGTON — The White House defended President Obama’s senior adviser on Monday for taking $100,000 in speaking fees before joining the government from a subsidiary of a company working with the Iranian government.

David Plouffe, who managed Mr. Obama’s campaign in 2008 and joined the White House staff in January 2011, accepted the money from an affiliate of MTN Group, a South Africa-based telecommunications firm, for two speeches in Nigeria. MTN is part of a joint venture in Iran’s mobile communications market reportedly linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The White House rejected criticism of Mr. Plouffe’s dealings with the firm, saying that MTN was not a major focus of those seeking to cut off business with Iran when it issued the invitation in the spring of 2010. “Even the most zealous watchdog group on this issue did not start their campaign on the host’s holding company until many months later,” said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. “Criticism of Mr. Plouffe now for issues and controversies that developed only years later is simply misplaced.”

Mr. Plouffe’s six-figure payment from MTN was reported by The Washington Post on Monday and quickly seized on by Republicans who have attacked Mr. Obama for not being tough enough in pressing Iran to abandon its nuclear program.

There is no indication that Mr. Plouffe violated rules by speaking for the company, but doing so in December 2010 just weeks before joining Mr. Obama’s White House staff could raise questions about the timing and give ammunition to adversaries in a tight re-election campaign.

Mr. Plouffe’s allies defended him by pointing to examples of Republicans who gave paid speeches for firms with business in Iran before going to work for President George W. Bush. They also noted that Mitt Romney, the putative Republican nominee, was an investor in a competing firm that originally won the Iranian contract that later went to MTN.

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The Turkish firm Mr. Romney invested in, Turkcell, sued this year for $4.2 billion, accusing MTN of winning the Iranian contract by bribing officials and promising Iran weapons and United Nations votes, according to news accounts distributed by Mr. Plouffe’s allies. While it might seem odd for Mr. Plouffe’s defenders to note that the company he took money from is accused of trying to bribe and arm Iran, they argued that what mattered was that Mr. Romney stood to gain if the lawsuit succeeded.

Under Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama, the United States has tightened sanctions against Iran as it has developed a nuclear enrichment program. MTN is in business with Irancell, which according to a 2006 American government cable obtained by the group WikiLeaks is “fully owned” by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, considered a central instrument of repression in Iran.

MTN said recently that it is working with American officials to ensure compliance with sanctions. It asked an American court this month to dismiss the Turkcell lawsuit because it had already been unsuccessful twice before.

According to a nonpartisan advocacy group called United Against Nuclear Iran, MTN “carried out orders from the regime to shut off text messaging and Skype during times of political protest, and reportedly has a floor in its Tehran headquarters where Iranian military officials compile and access tracking data. That data has been used to track, apprehend, torture and kill regime opponents.” “Simply put,” the group said in a statement, “MTN has blood on its hands.”

The advocacy group’s chief executive, Mark Wallace, and president, Kristen Silverberg, both served as advisers and ambassadors under Mr. Bush, and Ms. Silverberg is an outside adviser to Mr. Romney. But the group’s advisory board also includes Democrats, and among its alumni are several who served in the Obama administration, including the former Middle East adviser, Dennis Ross, and Richard C. Holbrooke, who died in 2010.

A version of this article appears in print on August 7, 2012, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Aide’s Fees Draw Critics And, Then, Defenders. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe